


Sea Fox

by deathwailart



Series: The Holy Sea [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Female Character of Color, Character Study, Female Friendship, Gen, Living Myths, Pirates, Sailing, thieves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 13:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2310698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Before you were even born," her mother liked to say, usually when she was in trouble, trying not to grin when her mother rolled her eyes, "You stole the hearts of an entire crew. Each and every person aboard loved you, even when you were just a speck, not even a pearl yet. The little thief. The crew of the ship liked to say you were the ship made flesh, that the ship wanted to have just as much fun as all the rest of them." </p>
<p>Or Araceli, the sea fox, the greatest thief in all of Castileos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sea Fox

"Before you were even born," her mother liked to say, usually when she was in trouble, trying not to grin when her mother rolled her eyes, "you stole the hearts of an entire crew. Each and every person aboard loved you, even when you were just a speck, not even a pearl yet. The little thief. The crew of the ship liked to say you were the ship made flesh, that the ship wanted to have just as much fun as all the rest of them." She would always try to imagine herself in those moments as a ship, wondering if her body was just the carved figurehead that saw the whole world before anyone else aboard the ship did or if her whole body was the ship itself; when the wind caught her hair and it would billow like sails and she stared out to the horizon and wondered, threw her arms wide and laughed even as her eyes stung. Maybe it was why she ran everywhere, why she liked to linger on the docks whenever her mother took her out or, once she was old enough, she spent most of her time playing with other children there. She'd slept better on her father's ship than she had in any bed when she was a baby, so everyone liked to say, so her mother liked to tell her. "The little sea fox," mother sometimes teases, telling her daughter a story of when they stopped in Estene on the way home to Castileos, her mother so close to having her when a fox appeared as she sat at the docks, chatting to locals, petting his ears before he leapt and stole her lunch as she laughed and laughed. Araceli was not simply a daughter of the sea and the moon, nor a Son and a Bride and yet she is.  
  
"I am the sea fox."  
  
She is Araceli Bonaventura y Castell, named for her father and her mother as is custom for the child of a Bride and a Son. She is also Azarola for her sharp features and that she reminded the crew of the foxes in other lands, those in Albas with their thick handsome pelts, white as snow and ice that steal from the huge lumbering bears and cats so much bigger than them without fear, or the red fellows that slink around the docks of Estene and Ebeos when they realise there is just as much, if not more, food for them than stealing chickens from a henhouse or hunting rabbits, sailors who will throw them whole fish and plenty of fat rats scuttling around. She is the only fox in all of Castileos where there are many, many cats and birds and even dogs but no fox but her. She is of average height and she is her mother and her father; her father's curls and his roguish grin, her mother's eyes and her warm brown skin. She is sometimes more her father than her mother but if her mother is the sea's Bride and her father is a Son and both are the sea then that just means that Araceli _is_ the sea, wild and wilful and full of life, rising to meet any challenge. She is her father's laugh, her mother's grace, his sense of adventure and her mother's way of reading people. She is the only fox in all of Castileos and it becomes her nickname by the age of twelve when, craving adventure and enjoying the rough and tumble with the children who live by the docks, unlike she who lives in the brothel with her mother, joins up with a group of thieves about her own age. Araceli fox face, that's what they call her when she's young and later she'll be quick one, sly one and later still, when she's a woman not a girl they'll call her Araceli thief in the night for more than one reason. She dresses finely under her mother's eyes in blues and greens and greys and whites, wears trousers more than skirts because her mother doesn't want her tearing them but when she's with her friends she dresses like they do, like a wharf rat, nothing to make her stand out even when every man and woman knows her through her mother or her father or often both.  
  
With the thieves she learns to pick pockets, to cut purses and she in turn teaches them all she's learned from observing the Brides and Consorts. She's charming, knows how to flatter and beguile, can read a face as sure as she can read words on a page and she knows when they're rumbled or better still when they're about to be rumbled. She acts as lookout and a fence because she's got a silver tongue and she can haggle as well as any fishwife to get a good price, swaggering back with pockets full of coin. Her mother doesn't despair except for the times – rare though they are – when she's caught and brought back by a guard or disgruntled man or woman, her ear clamped between a thumb and forefinger, hissing and squirming like a cat. Her mother tells her off in front of whoever brings her home but she smiles when the door is closed and tells her to be careful next time.  
  
Her mother knows she raised a sea fox, the only one in all of Castileos.  
  
Until one day when her father comes to Castileos with a gift, swaggering off his ship as Araceli waits at the dock, waving and beaming. He's not exactly like a father because the sea is Araceli's father but he is the sea made flesh so he is. He brings her gifts like a father would, loves her like a father would, promises to take her out to sea, like a father would so he's her father. No one outside Castileos would probably understand, not when she switches between calling him father and Felix and captain but he just smiles and nods and loves her the way any man would love his child. He's been gone a long time when he returns because everyone always tells Neria when Felix is due back or word reaches Araceli as she scampers about the docks with her friends and fellow thieves. As ever he whips off his hat and plops it on her head, bending down to be at her height and he pauses with a sort of wonder when he realises how she's grown in his absence, that she doesn't have to peer up at him so much, that the hat doesn't fall over her face the way it once did. Then he smiles and hugs her close, smelling like sweat and the sea, like the leather of his coat, the spice of his cologne and she grins until something squirms and makes a little noise and he pulls back, smiling at her as he pulls out a little black bundle. Felix always brings gifts, jewellery or books or trinkets, a compass once that she keeps inside her clothes at all times unless she's admiring it.  
  
"Is it a cat?" She asks at first as he cups the little thing in his big hands, mostly black but with patches of white and grey. "It looks like a strange sort of cat."  
  
"That would be because it – he, I should say – is not a cat." Her father holds the little ball of fur out to her and she takes him, cupping him in her hands and then a little face peers up at her, white around the amber eyes, an even darker wet nose sniffing at her speculatively. "He's a fox," he clarifies after Araceli strokes carefully, letting him sniff then lick her fingers.  
  
"I thought foxes were red or white?" She asks because that's what her mother told her and her mother has been so many places and still goes away, leaving Araceli in the care of others as she does her duties, both of them exchanging letters as best they can.  
  
"So did I but we stopped at a little island we don't even know the name of and he must've crept aboard. By the time we realised it was too far to go back, he stayed in our cabins, don't think he liked the sea too much but I thought he might feel better with you. You're the only fox in Castileos, aren't you?"  
  
She goes shy all of a sudden because her father is a captain and the only reason people call her a fox is because she tells them because it's what her mother calls her. "I'm not the only fox anymore, am I?"  
  
"Right you are." He takes his hat back and drops a kiss on both her cheeks and her forehead, beard and moustache tickling. "Why don't you tuck him in your pocket and come say hello to the crew, they've all been missing you."  
  
She names the fox Lux in the end, for his thick soft fur and for the light patches about his eyes and at his toes, at the tip of his tail. From then on she is no longer the only fox in Castileos, Araceli and her shadow Lux, partners in crime, getting into all sorts of trouble as he begs for fish from anyone who'll fall for his big sad eyes the same way Araceli uses her own to distract potential victims. Her mother sighs and tells Lux she'll have him turned into a scarf if he's not careful when he gets in trouble but like Araceli and everyone else, she utterly adores the silly beast.  
  
Still, he never really does take to swimming unless under duress and not even his favourite foods will help ease his grumpy moods whenever he ends up in water if the resident Castilean squid aren't quick enough to catch him and set him back on dry land first.  
  
She leaves the brothel when she's sixteen.  
  
Her hair has grown long and she rarely if ever does more than tie it in a loose bun if she needs it out of her face. She dresses in fitted shirts and bodices that are cut to allow her freedom to move, in short trousers that just about tuck into her long boots, soft and supple leather, butter-soft. She lines her dark eyes with kohl as she branches out on her own. Not entirely alone though. There is Lux, as always since she was twelve, Lux who scampers and skulks as she does, who is almost as nimble and agile though cautious around water where she is not. She leaps from mooring pole to mooring pole, clutches to a rope or a ship here and there, clings to the sides of ships as she moves with only her tiptoes and fingertips to hold her in place. She can climb up masts and rigging with the ease of a sailor but she puts it to use climbing up the sides of buildings, running across the rooftops and leaping between them. It isn't that she's unafraid and it's not as if she never falls because she does sometimes, it's how she learns, crashing into the water and the arms of the squid that traverse the waterways of Castileos and help those who might take a tumble and when she's unlucky she crashes onto a balcony or the street, breaks a few bones once or twice and learns how to get better at what she does. She could take a job on a ship, she could be a Consort – not a Bride, she doesn't have that in her, she falls in love with people too easily for that sort of life and her devotion is a different sort, a knowing sort – but she stays a thief. It pays well, especially alone. More risk to be sure when it's only Lux and he's so far below, a system of warnings painstakingly learned over time between them but the cut is all hers and besides, her little home amongst the artists is small. A bedroom, a kitchen and living area, a tiny little washroom probably added when people were no longer to share a communal washroom, eating up a little chunk of space.  
  
It suits her just fine though, her and whatever ill-gotten gains she takes from those who can afford to lose a few things here and there. Nothing of sentimental value because she's not a monster, nothing from those who have more need than she and she always uses her money to pay the rent and to make sure everyone in her building, starving artists that they are, has at least one decent hot meal a day.  
  
Besides, Araceli knows how to deal with guards. Her mother and other Brides taught her grace and poise, how to properly charm and flatter a man or woman and it works with many guards if she smiles and presses close, bats her eyes just right, pouting up at them. Then there was Marjani, a small, plump pirate and friend of her father going back to when they were both young. Marjani of Corundus with her thick, soft-curled hair and the scar she won in a duel cutting diagonally through her lips that always reminded Araceli of a satisfied cat though her dark eyes lined and dusted gold and copper as was custom for most women hailing from betrayed her watchful nature and the way she remained alert for any and all possibilities, her skin near-black. Marjani had settled in Castileos years before when she'd fallen in love with the sea and with sailing, establishing herself and her reputation and it was she who had taught Araceli duelling with swords and pistols and muskets, had taken Araceli aboard her ship and to empty parts of the docks to train her. They had trained in the early morning when Araceli was still tired and sluggish, in the blazing heat of midday either when the full glare of the sun beat down on them, in the evening when the mist rolled in off the sea again and late at night when it was dark enough to almost render them blind. They trained when the thick mists rolled in from the sea and muffled all sound, when the days were humid enough to make you feel wet and sticky and slow no matter how little you moved.  
  
"I teach you this way Araceli because you must always be ready," she'd told her when she would adjust her grip on a pistol or tap the point of her rapier to Araceli's bare throat. "You must know how to fight at a moment's notice. You must be ready for the world, do you understand?"  
  
"I do, Marjani," she'd always replied as she aimed again or shook herself as she got to her feet. "Thank you for the lessons."  
  
When she was finally deemed ready by Marjani's standards she'd been gifted with a pair of beautiful rapiers with their intricate swirling hilt like vines and a pair of flintlock pistols, their grips made of pearl. A gift from when Marjani had been a girl and Araceli had tried to say no because they had such history but Marjani had laughed and cupped her cheeks, kissing her brow, telling her that she had been given them as a girl and they had kept her safe so they should do the same for another young woman. So she carries them with her everywhere, keeps them in the same pristine condition Marjani did and adds to them with a dagger tucked into each boot. Throwing knives at her belt and one shoulder. And a flintlock grappling gun, for walls she can't scale so easily. Most of it is for protection rather than fighting and it's rare that she's ever had to shoot to kill, she'd rather avoid that, use what she can to push someone back so she can make her escape and lie low, sell it all off and then keep her head down.  
  
Except she likes a challenge, loves it.  
  
At least using the cover of dark helps to mask her features enough that she's not so well known to all and sundry but then that isn't how she becomes known as Araceli thief in the night. That part comes from turning a more than friendly eye as she goes about her business, sons and daughters, men and women and she's been caught clambering out of many a window after she's snuck in, a key thrown to her when she makes her escape, enough so that she has a collection of them, most from young ladies because that's what she prefers if she's honest, all on soft scented ribbons that she hangs in her bedroom, not so much trophies as treasured keepsakes and reminders of fun nights.  
  
But there are plenty of times when she lingers in the quiet sections of the docks, days when she doesn't feel any particular desire to be around anyone, just her and Lux on their own. She usually goes in the early morning when the air is thick with brine, before the fog has been blown back out to sea, when only a few vendors are open and plying their wars. She wanders along, listening to Castileos wake as she walks past the docked ships, past the curved stone stairs of the docks for nobility and foreign dignitaries, to the very end where the old hulls and masts of ships brought home or washed up are returned. Whatever can be salvaged is gone and not even the shipbuilders and craftsmen she likes to learn from are here most of the time unless they're salvaging. She always liked to watch them work, to learn the workings of a ship the way a surgeon learns the workings of a body and Lux is content to chase gulls and other birds that swoop down to tug his tail, or to bat at crabs, facing off against them as Araceli curls herself against weathered wood with barnacles clustered higher and higher, mussels anchored in places, the sea slowly reclaiming until eventually nothing is left, just another ship whenever one is hauled in. It's not always where she plans her jobs but it's quieter than anywhere else, as though she's in a different world, everything else falling away entirely and she's not the sort of person to crave this kind of life but even the sea fox needs some measure of peace.  
  
It is, after all, where she plans out the job she takes as a challenge when she's just twenty, the one that changes her life. A silly bet made of cards and dice in a tavern about stealing the queen's jewels from her bedroom and she's so close, so ready, the plan perfect in her mind after meticulous journeys to scout the palace and learn the guard patrols, watching Leandra and her personal cadre of guards, five young women, each from a different land as is custom. It's quite the feat if she can pull it off but she's the sea's daughter, she can sneak into a palace and snatch up Leandra's jewels without being noticed at all, she has skills and luck no one else in all Castileos can match.  
  
_I stole the hearts of an entire crew before I was even born_ , she thinks, always. _I am the sea's fox, the little thief_ , she remembers, always.


End file.
